Fear Blocks Foresight – How to Take Back Your Power

By Kirsten Stendevad, author, keynote speaker, and leadership developer

It’s summer, and you’re sitting on the terrace with your laptop. The idea was to relax, maybe even gain a strategic overview. But then the notifications start rolling in: geopolitical tensions, market volatility, new regulations. Suddenly calm and reflection are replaced by that familiar knot in your stomach.

Because world events never take a break – and that means top leaders never really can either. While the rest of the organization may enjoy some mental downtime in the summer months, the leader’s brain runs constantly with worries about what could go wrong.

This is the paradox of modern business leadership: At the same time as we talk about innovation and transformation, fear paralyzes our ability to make the very decisions that could move the business forward. I see it again and again in the leadership development programs I run – talented leaders whose executives and boards make defensive decisions instead of daring to bet on the opportunities that could revolutionize their companies.

The problem is not that there isn’t enough to be afraid of. There is plenty: market turbulence, technological disruption, the war for talent, and regulatory change. But what we should really fear is fear itself – and the way it systematically undermines our leadership abilities.

Neurobiology is brutally simple: When we live in chronic fear, the primitive survival system takes control. The amygdala – the brain’s built-in alarm bell – is constantly activated, while the prefrontal cortex, responsible for strategic thinking, creativity, and complex problem-solving, is deprioritized.

The consequence is concrete: We become less intelligent, less creative, and less capable of making the nuanced decisions modern leadership requires. Research clearly shows that chronic stress actually changes the brain’s structure – the amygdala grows, while the regions for learning and critical thinking shrink.

In practice, this means that the leader who constantly worries about competitors’ next moves, about employee attrition, or about quarterly results, quite literally loses access to the brain functions that could solve those very challenges.

At the organizational level, fear-based leadership creates a toxic spiral that suffocates everything we claim to want: Innovation dies because employees chase safety instead of fresh thinking. Creative solutions are sacrificed on the altar of control. Instead of daring to experiment, we institutionalize what worked before – even when “before” is no longer relevant.

Collaboration erodes as teams engage in turf wars to protect their domains. The trust that is fundamental for effective knowledge-sharing disappears when everyone is afraid of being held responsible for others’ “mistakes.”

Decision-making stalls. Either critical choices are postponed in the hope that problems will resolve themselves, or they are made defensively with the goal of minimizing risk instead of maximizing opportunity.

And this costs us. Not only on the bottom line – though of course it does – but in everything we miss out on. Every time we choose the safe over the true, every time we cling to the status quo out of fear of change, we lose the breakthroughs that could have made the difference.

I’ve worked with companies where leadership teams spent 80% of their time on risk management and only 20% on strategic development. That’s not leadership – that’s administration of fear.

The good news? Fear is not permanent programming. The brain is plastic, and with the right techniques, we can restore access to our full cognitive capacity.

In my leadership programs, for example, I combine brain training with EMDR technology (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR, used in the military to treat PTSD, calms the hyperactivity of the amygdala and reopens access to strategic thinking. The results are dramatic: Leaders regain up to 25% more brain capacity, reduce anxiety by 90%, and see opportunities where they previously saw threats. They make decisions based on vision rather than fear. They create cultures where innovation is not just tolerated but actively sought.

This is not naïve optimism. It is a fundamentally different approach to leadership that emerges when we are no longer trapped in survival mode. When the prefrontal cortex is allowed to function optimally, we actually see things more clearly – both risks and opportunities. The fearless leader does not necessarily take more chances – but they take the right chances. Decisions are made with full access to both sharp analysis and creative solutions.

So the question for you as a leader is: Are you making your strategic decisions out of fear or out of possibility? Do you build your team on control or on trust? Do you pursue innovation or safety?

The answer is not to ignore risks, but to regain the ability to navigate them without being paralyzed by them. That is the difference between merely surviving – and thriving – both as a leader and as a company.